Obama and the trheat to Miranda rights..........

[robinblue]

I fear we are going down the wrong path with this.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16sun1.html?hp

Editorial
The Threat to Miranda
Published: May 14, 2010


For nearly nine years, the threat of international terrorism has fueled a government jackhammer, cutting away at long-established protections of civil liberties. It has been used to justify warrantless wiretapping, an expansion of the state secrets privilege in federal lawsuits, the use of torture, and the indefinite detention of people labeled enemy combatants. None of these actions were necessary to fight terrorism, and neither is a dubious Obama administration proposal to loosen the Miranda rules when questioning terror suspects and to delay presenting suspects to a judge.

A change to a fundamental constitutional protection like Miranda should not be tossed out on a Sunday talk show with few details and a gauzy justification. If Attorney General Eric Holder really wants to change the rules, he owes the public a much better explanation.

At the most basic level, it is not even clear that the warning requirement can be changed, except from the bench. The Miranda warning was the creation of the Supreme Court as a way of enforcing the Fifth Amendment. Since 1966, it has reduced coerced confessions and reminded suspects that they have legal rights.

The Rehnquist court warned against meddling with the rule in a 2000 decision forbidding Congress to overrule the warnings to suspects, which over the decades became an ingrained law enforcement practice. ...........................

[Mojorabbit]

1. This is so worrisome

to me. One of Obama's big selling points to me was that he was a constitutional law professor. I was hoping for restoration of all that we had lost in the last admin.